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Category Archives: mammals
Molecular natural history: The Channel Island foxes
Molecular Natural History is a series of posts highlighting what population genetic data has revealed about some of my favorite organisms. There’s no rhyme or reason to what species I’ll feature for this, beyond the fact that they’ve made me … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, mammals, Molecular Natural History, natural history
Tagged Urocyon littoralis
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The glaciers of the last ice age left their mark on the genetic diversity of species across the globe
For the last two and a half million years or so — up until a certain species of upright-walking ape descendants really started making their presence known — the greatest force shaping Earth’s biological diversity may well have been ice. … Continue reading
Posted in evolution, insects, mammals, mutation, phylogeography, plants, population genetics
Tagged glacier, Quaternary
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How do you use genome-wide diversity in conservation?
Measuring how genome-wide diversity matters to threatened species has been a constant endeavor of conservation genetics, and still is in the era of genomics. But what should we do with the fact that it often do not correlate with IUCN Red List categories, a measure of species’ threat status? Continue reading
Can small populations benefit from genetic rescue?
The core dogma of conservation biology is clear: small populations are bad for species’ persistence. If we observe a population of endangered vertebrates harboring abundant deleterious mutations but without any reduction in fitness, what is happening there? I would like … Continue reading
Marmots, seasons, and climate change
I love when nostalgia for a project, place, or species intersects with a current interest, as happened this week for me with a paper by Cordes et al. 2020, about the contrasting effects of climate change on the seasonal survival … Continue reading
Posted in climate change, ecology, mammals
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It’s the city life for me… or maybe not.
Michael Fitch wrote this post as part of Dr. Stacy Krueger-Hadfield’s Evolution course at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He completed a B.S. in Biology from the UAB and is currently considering entering the Master’s program. Current interests… all over … Continue reading
How to handle the burden of deleterious mutations
With the increasingly pressing matter of populations being threatened by fragmentation and isolation, and with progressively more efficient sequencing technologies and analytical tools at hand, conservation genetics is starting to turn the spotlight on the topic of genetic load. It … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, demography, ecology, evolution, genomics, mammals, population genetics
Tagged genetic load, genetic purging, ibex, mutation load
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Inbreeding and the cougar genome
This week, some of my favorite #scicomm games on Twitter are teaming up with March Mammal Madness to reveal this year’s #2020MMM contestants in my favorite “battle of the fittest.” Specifically, today (2/21/2020) at 12:30 pm EST, Dr. Michelle LaRue … Continue reading
Posted in conservation, genomics, mammals
Tagged cats, conservation genetics, genome, genomics, mammals
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The world through the senses of a pangolin
This Saturday, February 15, is World Pangolin Day, and thus it is a good time to do some PR for these fascinating animals. Continue reading
Posted in ecology, evolution, genomics, mammals, RNAseq, transcriptomics
Tagged pangolin, senses, transcriptomics
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Of microbes and whales
At the end of January, the International Society for Microbial Ecology (ISME) journal put out a list: “Readers’ Choice: The best of The ISME Journal 2019” . I don’t know about you (my fellow scientists also with 35+ chrome tabs … Continue reading
Posted in bioinformatics, community ecology, ecology, mammals, microbiology
Tagged bowhead, lipidome, microbial communities, wax esters
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